It's dismaying to see Hillary Clinton still repeating the
discredited idea that a single payer health care system would be too expensive. Although we already know it provides
comprehensive and universal health care at a fraction of the cost of American's
non-system everywhere it has been tried, some of her supporters continue to
find various justifications for opposing what polls show 85%
of Democrats say they want. There has never been a better example of the
self-defeating nature of establishment thinking in the Democratic Party. Attitudes about Clinton are so fixed that you
have to wonder, if the primary were a referendum on single payer, would Democrats
actually reject it?

Of course, the election is about much more than that. Sanders has opened and
closed the last two debates with well-honed arguments that taking on the
corrupting influence of Wall Street would be his first priority. What he has not
said in his comments about single payer is that concern for their Wall Street
patrons was the reason Democrats took it off the table at the beginning of the health
care reform debate in 2009. Their excuse was that it was "unrealistic." Instead,
they offered a bait-and-switch in the form of the Public Option. It was billed
as a step to single payer because everyone would choose cheap, comprehensive
Medicare-type over the spotty coverage of overpriced private insurance.
However, Senator Schumer
quickly ended that vain hope when he made a deal to handicap the Public
Option so it could not compete with private insurance.

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Those who understand the economics of single payer know that the "reform"
debate was primarily aimed at bailing out the Wall Street-owned medical
insurance industry that was in the process of pricing itself out of existence.
This is the "death spiral" of insurance costs: Increasing costs drive people
from the market, requiring further increases to maintain shareholder profits
and industry executive bonuses, resulting in more people unable to afford
insurance. Unchecked, this would soon have led to a situation where average Americans
would be paying 50% or more just for insurance premiums. Obviously, this is
unsustainable. Enter corporate Democrats, with a "reform" that guarantees
millions more customers for the insurance industry, subsidized by taxes that go
directly into the pockets of Wall Street investors.

Many rank-and-file Democrats failed to ask themselves what the suppression of
the debate about single payer said about the chances of eventually electing a
Democratic majority that would put the interests of people over profit. The
answer is that the Democratic leadership, being dependent on Wall Street to
control the White House, is insufficiently willing to challenge the corruption
of the system. Until we find leaders in the party who will, there is no reason
to expect anything to change.

Reforming campaign finance would make achieving single payer and accomplishing
the rest of the progressive agenda possible. The alternative is abandoning hope
of getting what we need in exchange for what we can get, in the name of
"pragmatism." In using this as a selling point for her candidacy, Clinton is
apparently arguing that truly representative democracy is a naïve notion. Elect her, she says, and she will use her
experience navigating the existing corrupt system to fight for small, incremental
victories that do not challenge the corporate takeover of American government
and the economy.

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Clinton claims that her experience will enable her to guide us gradually in the
general direction of where we need to go. It would be very interesting to hear
how she plans to do this in the face of a hostile Congress that is likely to
continue to be dominated by Republicans who have a visceral hatred for her.
Would Democratic chances be any worse with a "socialist" who has explained that
all he means by the term is someone who will fight for all Americans, rather
than compromise principle on the altar of expediency?

Sanders cannot pass single payer by himself, but neither can Clinton honestly
promise to deliver any meaningful reforms of the Byzantine, unaffordable and woefully
inadequate system of Obamacare. It will take a mass movement of Americans
demanding their government put their interests over corporate profit to get
real health care reform.

This article originally appeared on the website of Soldiers For Peace International. It may be reproduced unedited, with attribution and a link to the original source, 48 hours after publication here.

I am a former Army and VA psychiatrist who ran for the US Senate in 2010 on a campaign based on a pledge to introduce a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood.
Now that the general public is beginning to understand the (more...)